Pete Rose bet on baseball as a player, according to new documents

In 2005, MLB legend Pete Rose finally admitted that he gambled on baseball games. However, he insisted he only bet on games as a manager and never a player.

According to new documents that were uncovered in an ESPN Outside the Lines report, Rose was lying.

Copies from pages of a notebook that was seized from a 1989 raid of a former Rose associate’s house indicate that Rose bet on baseball — including the Cincinnati Reds — during the 1986 season when he served as both manager and a player. The notebook was taken from Michael Bertolini’s house roughly two months after Rose was banned from baseball. It had previously been kept under a court-ordered seal.

The documents were reviewed by John Dowd, a former federal official who led Major League Baseball’s Rose investigation more than 25 years ago.

“This does it,” Dowd told Outside the Lines. “This closes the door.”

Dowd said that Rose was betting with “mob-connected bookmakers” in the 1980s and that Dowd’s investigation team had sworn testimony from a bookie that indicated Rose had been betting on Reds games between 1984 and 1986. They failed to obtain Bertolini’s written records, which they suspected would be the final piece in their case against Rose.

The documents, which you can see here, show that Rose was betting on games all the time, though there’s nothing that indicates he bet against the Reds. From March 1986 to July 1986, Rose bet on at least one MLB game on 30 different days. He gambled on the Reds 21 out of those 30 times, including games in which he played.

The entire report is worth a read. The new documents have been released at a time when it seemed like Rose was closer than ever to being reinstated, especially with new commissioner Rob Manfred recently revealing that Rose would be part of the All-Star Game festivities in Cincinnati.